Harbaugh: “I’m not disappointed in the way Colin played at all.”

Jim Harbaugh has gained a reputation as a coach who’ll stick up for his players at all times, particularly his quarterbacks. He was vague during his Monday afternoon press conference about what specifically went wrong with the 49ers’ offense on Sunday night, but he was clear about who he thought deserved the least blame: quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“He made the most amount of the plays we made on offense. We didn’t make enough, but I thought Colin competed and played hard and played well at times. Probably was the most productive person we had on offense,” Harbaugh said.

“I’m not disappointed in the way Colin played at all. He did what he could.”

Kaepernick led the 49ers with 87 yards rushing, but also threw three interceptions, completed fewer than half his passing attempts and averaged only 4.5 yards per attempt — easily his worst performance statistically since becoming a starter. Harbaugh gave Seattle’s defense credit for making life hard on Kaepernick.

“There was good coverage. There was pressure at times. Go back and looking at the tape, Colin competed, was seeing the field, made plays,” Harbaugh said.

In the spirit of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” Harbaugh didn’t mention any of the receivers during Monday’s presser. Instead he focused on what Seattle did well, although in today’s NFL even the most talented, physical defensive backfields are at a disadvantage when going up against elite receivers. Just don’t tell that to Richard Sherman.

Sherman’s postgame comments and how he patted Harbaugh’s butt after the game took some attention to the way Sherman played in the game itself. Sherman didn’t allow one catch to Anquan Boldin, and there was a montage NBC showed of Sherman playing Boldin on several snaps where Sherman was attached to the 49ers’ No. 1 receiver while also getting under Boldin’s skin — almost like a tick.

I asked the following question:

“Richard Sherman was very physical near the line of scrimmage, a lot of clutching and grabbing. Do you think he was playing within the rules because he was in that five-yard window, and how do you combat that to get open?”

Harbaugh neither answered the question nor took an opportunity to either complain about Sherman’s physical play (like he did about Seattle’s secondary as a whole last year after the 49ers beat the Seahawks at home) or talk about what adjustments a receiver like Boldin must make. All he did was say nice things about Sherman.

“He did a very good job. The coverage was tight. He was an excellent player,” Harbaugh said.

Harbaugh refused to answer questions regarding who gets the blame for Frank Gore’s lack of production thus far. At least publicly, he sounded like someone who wanted to avoid making comments that the media could seize on while complimenting a group that has allowed only 29 points to the 49ers in their last three meetings.

“Seattle’s got a good defense. They played extremely well. As the game flowed, we don’t get points on the first drive. We come away with nothing after a good drive. Then, momentum plays were made by Seattle’s defense. The hole in the dyke got a little bigger, a little bigger and then finally caved in,” Harbaugh said.

More Monday Notes

— Ian Williams, who broke his ankle on Sunday night, is “going to be out for the year,” Harbaugh said. “It’s disappointing, and he’ll have surgery today.”

— Eric Reid is going through the NFL’s concussion protocol. “Good news is he’s not symptomatic today,” said Harbaugh.

— No news on Ray McDonald (ankle) or Vernon Davis (hamstring).

— Harbaugh on all the penalties (23 in the first two games): “It’s an obvious area that we need to improve on. Hopefully we’ll see significant improvement this week. That’s something we’ll zero in on.”

— The 49ers will also zero in on how to stop, or at least slow, Andrew Luck next Sunday. Harbaugh talked about how Luck is even better than he appears on TV.

“The ball comes out quicker than it looks like it comes out. The velocity on the throws is more than what it looks like. As good as he looks and as physical as he looks in the pocket and tough to bring down, he’s even harder to bring down than you think. When he’s out of the pocket he can make a throw on the run, or when he’s running he’s faster than he looks,” said Harbaugh.

“It’s the third week in a row that we’ll play one of the top quarterbacks in the league. There’s not a lot of weaknesses that he has. He’s a top notch player.”

About the Author

BASG (Steve Berman) and his wife started Bay Area Sports Guy in 2008, and now it's the No. 1 independent website covering Bay Area sports. You can follow him @BASportsGuy and on Facebook.

Related Posts

49ers got talent? Sure, if these guys prove it (Part 1)
Most people I’ve talked to think the 49ers are going to be a com...

With the new "smart" stadium are we going to get 60,000 people staring at their phones? Give me an atmosphere like CenturyLink any day. Hopefully, the Niners were able to include some "sound retention" elements into their design like the Seahawks. It would be great to have that kind of home field advantage.

Noise being pumped in at Seattle via the PA system has been mentioned a couple times. It's crossed my mind but I'm not sure a team would even be able to get away with that. Wouldn't it be pretty obvious if there was noise blarring from the speakers, even if the crowd is somewhat blending in with it? I can't imagine a stadium having some secret, hidden room where they operate the PA system.

I think Seattle is so loud because there fans feed off that reputation of being loud and having an effect on the game. Also, because of the architecture of the stadium.

@Beaver You're probably right. With how expensive it is going to be to get tickets, all the passionate, loud fans will be priced out. It's going to be a bunch of rich snobs who are there just to brag about it and be seen.

@FFUC There aren't any rules about acoustics or architecture that I've heard, but the NFL tried enforcing a rule that was described in a recent SI article about silent snap counts:

By '89 the noise problem was so out of hand—quarterbacks kept getting injured, and offenses had had enough—that the league at last stepped in. NFL Rule 4, Section 3, Article 7, Paragraph 13 ("Obvious inability of the offense to hear team signals due to crowd noise") was amended, installing a nine-step procedure so complex that it would have done U.N. arms negotiators proud. The new instructions said, in essence, that the ref could stop the game if the stadium was too loud, and after a series of warnings he could penalize the home team one of its timeouts. When all the timeouts were gone, he could assess five-yard penalties until the crowd backed off.

And it worked—except it didn't. Bengals coach Sam Wyche thought the rule was absurd, and he had his quarterback, Boomer Esiason, put it to the test in an exhibition game that year in the New Orleans Superdome. The crowd noise wasn't even that bad, but at Wyche's direction, Esiason complained, the ref stopped play, and when the warning went out over the public address system, according to Sports Illustrated pro football guru Paul Zimmerman, "the decibel level [went] up by about 200 percent." So the ref threw the flag and subtracted a Saints timeout. The crowd roared all the louder. When New Orleans's timeouts were gone, the ref assessed a five-yard penalty, and finally the disgruntled crowd obeyed. Play resumed.

It proved to be a Pyrrhic victory. Football fans around the country erupted in protest. "Next day everyone who ever wrote a high school editorial was at his typewriter," Zimmerman wrote, "firing away about the high-handed NFL dictating to the fans who spent their hard-earned money on a ticket about when they could or could not make noise. There were cries of fascism from the left wing press." The league backed down.

"The rule was too complicated," says Joel Bussert, the NFL's vice president of player personnel and football operations. But that wasn't really it. The rule was universally unpopular. "We saw in that exhibition game that the crowd didn't care if the Saints kept their timeouts or not," says Bussert. "They lost all three timeouts! It was good sport. Everyone was having a good time. So the rule just disappeared by acclamation at the league meeting."Didn't work."

@Bay Area Sports Guy@FFUC Good knowledge. Was mostly curious, I had never thought about that. I've seen other teams get dismantled in there much like the Niners did and it's always been one of those things where when the Seahawks are 'good' they're often 7-1 or better at home and sometimes horrible on the road but 7-1 + 2-6 = 9-7

ABOUT BAY AREA SPORTS GUY

Giants, 49ers, Warriors, Raiders, Athletics, Sharks, Stanford or Cal – BASG has it covered. Bay Area Sports Guy is the sports guy for all sports guys (and girls), writing about Bay Area sports and the local sports media since 2008. BASG is the largest independent blog covering Bay Area sports, and took People’s Choice in CBS San Francisco’s "Most Valuable Blogger Awards 2011."